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CelloBello Launches an All-New Website

CelloBello Launches an All-New Website

Welcome to the All-New CelloBello!

We are thrilled to finally unveil this classy new website; more beautiful, more versatile, and more flexible than we ever imagined possible. Seven years of growth necessitated a move from CelloBello’s original digs to a roomier and more updated new home. We are certain that you will enjoy the dazzling graphics, mobile friendly layout, and all of the many new lessons, master classes, interviews, and substantive new content of this site.

Please take a self-guided tour through all sections, and familiarize yourself with the layout and navigation. The website is now mobile friendly, and will conform to your smart phone or tablet screen, making it easier than ever to take it into a practice room and keep it next to you as an educational resource as you work. And we have a new global, site-wide search function that will pull related material together for you. Try entering “Bach” in the search box, for example, and you will be shown literally dozens of recordings, lessons, master classes, interviews, and blogs, accumulated over the past several years.

To celebrate this opening, we have released 11 new videos full of wonderful advice and information from Robert deMaine, Paul Katz, Yo-Yo Ma, Marcy Rosen, and Alisa Weilerstein. And we have much more on its way! We will give you a few days to digest these lessons, master classes, and interviews, and then begin sharing additional material!

You can read about our Bach Celebration in CelloNews. We began last week with a livestream of Pieter Wispelwey performing all six Bach Suites live from Amsterdam, and a CelloChat on Bach with Paul Katz. This week we have a live-streamed class on Thursday, and a CelloChat on Sunday on the Bach cello suites with Laurence Lesser. The Bach Celebration will continue in future weeks with Colin Carr, Antonio Lysy, and Inbal Segev. And be sure to read their articles on Bach in CelloBlogs as well!

CelloBello has a huge amount of content to integrate and so we expect some inevitable bugs that we will need to work out over the next couple of weeks. We would appreciate a quick email from you if you experience problems or notice something that is not working. Please help us by writing to webmaster@cellobello.org.

I am immensely grateful for the Team CelloBello staff – Jussi, Clare, Danny, Elana, and Michelle. We are also fortunate to have found the brilliant Paul Boivin and Blink-Tech, who have given us devoted web design and computer expertise for this educational project at bargain prices. Above all, this new website is thanks to my amazing web-master, Jussi. Jussi’s technical and organizational skills, tasteful and sensitive sense of aesthetics, and iron-willed work ethic, have guided this entire project over the course of many months.

My thanks to all the amazing artists and pedagogues who volunteer their time to contribute their knowledge and artistic perceptions, and to the many thousands of cellists and cello-lovers who frequent CelloBello; it is your enthusiasm, loyalty, and support that make this all possible.

In a world so fraught with division, it is immensely satisfying to be able to foster something of beauty and collaboration on an international scale. I like to think that CelloBello serves as a tiny example of what can be accomplished by people who value cooperation, have an interest in and tolerance for a broad range of differing ideas, and the desire to openly share their knowledge and expertise. This adventure continues to enrich my life, and I thank you all!

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Paul Katz is known to concertgoers the world over as cellist of the Cleveland Quartet, which during an international career of 26 years made more than 2500 appearances on four continents, in all of the music capitals, great concert halls and music festivals of the world. As a member of this celebrated ensemble from 1969-1995, he performed at the White House and on many television shows including “CBS Sunday Morning,” NBC’s “Today Show,” “The Grammy Awards” (in 1973, the first classical musicians ever to appear on that show,) and was seen in “In The Mainstream: The Cleveland Quartet,” a one hour documentary televised across the U.S. and Canada.

Mr. Katz has received many honors, including the American String Teacher’s Association “Artist-Teacher of the Year 2003;” Indiana University’s “Chevalier du Violoncelle,” awarded for distinguished achievements and contributions to the world of cello playing and teaching; Chamber Music America’s highest honor, The Richard M. Bogomolny National Service Award, awarded for a lifetime of distinguished service in the field of chamber music; and an Honorary Doctorate of Musical Arts from Albright College. Mr. Katz served for six years as President of Chamber Music America, the national service organization in the United States that has in its membership virtually all of the country’s 600 professional chamber music ensembles, as well as hundreds of presenting organizations, music festivals and managers. As an author, he has appeared in numerous publications and wrote the liner notes for the Cleveland Quartet’s three-volume set of the complete Beethoven Quartets on RCA Red Seal.

Mr. Katz has appeared as soloist in New York, Cleveland, Toronto, Detroit, Los Angeles, and other cities throughout North America. He was a student of Gregor Piatigorsky, Janos Starker, Bernard Greenhouse, Gabor Rejto and Leonard Rose. In 1962 he was selected nationally to play in the historic Pablo Casals Master Class in Berkeley, California and was a prizewinner in the Munich and Geneva Competitions. Of special interest to cellists are his recordings of the Dohnanyi Cello Sonata for ProArte Records and the Cleveland Quartet’s recording on Sony Classical of the Schubert two-cello quintet with Yo-Yo Ma. The Cleveland Quartet has nearly 70 recordings to its credit on RCA Victor, Telarc International, Sony, Philips and ProArte. These recording have earned many distinctions including the all-time best selling chamber music release of Japan, 11 Grammy nominations, Grammy Awards for Best Chamber Music Recording and Best Recorded Contemporary Composition in 1996, and “Best of the Year” awards from Time Magazine and Stereo Review.

In September of 2001, Mr. Katz joined the faculty of The New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, following five years at Rice University in Houston and twenty years (1976-1996) of teaching at the Eastman School of Music. He has mentored many of the fine young string quartets on the world’s stages today including the Ariel, Biava, Cavani, Chester, Harlem, Jupiter, Kuss, Lafayette, Maia, Meliora, Omer, Parker, T’ang and Ying Quartets. One of America’s most sought after cello teachers, his cello students, in addition to membership in many of the above quartets, have achieved international careers with solo CD’s on Decca, EMI, Channel Classics and Sony Classical. They occupy positions in many of the world’s major orchestras including principal chairs of orchestras such as Detroit, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Oslo, Norway and Osaka, Japan, and are members of many American symphony orchestras such as Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, National Symphony, Pittsburgh, Rochester and St. Louis.

Mr. Katz has been a participant at many of the world’s major summer music festivals and schools including twenty years at the Aspen Festival, Marlboro Festival, the Yale Summer School of Chamber Music, the Perlman Music Program, Yellow Barn, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival in Germany, ProQuartet in France, Domaine Forget, Orford, Toronto Summer Music, and the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada, the Steans Institute of The Ravinia Festival, The Heifetz Institute, and is a Director of the Shouse Artist Institute of the Great Lakes Chamber Festival. His hundreds of master classes worldwide include many of the major music schools of North and South America, Europe, Israel, Japan and China. Mr. Katz frequently sits on the juries of international cello and chamber music competitions, including the Leonard Rose International Cello Competition, the Gyeongnam International Cello Competition in Korea, and the international string quartet competitions of Banff, London, Munich, Graz and Geneva.

Paul Katz currently resides in Boston, MA with his wife, pianist Pei-Shan Lee.